The Zombie Chasers #4

by John Kloepfer

  “We don’t know that yet, guys,” Zoe said, trying to stay positive.

  “We don’t know anything,” said Zack. “Except that Rice is a zombie again.”

  “I wish Rice was still Rice,” Madison said. “He’d totally know why he was a zombie again.”

  “Well,” Zoe said to Madison, “don’t just stand there. Go unzombify the little twerp.”

  Zack reopened the door and took his BZF by the arm. Zoe followed suit and grabbed zombie Rice by his other arm. They wheeled him around like two bouncers escorting a rowdy patron from a nightclub.

  “Yarghle-blarghle!” Rice snarled, jerking his head back and forth like a rabid animal. Ozzie put a bear hug around Rice’s knees and lifted him up so his back was parallel with the ground. Zombie Rice squirmed while Madison pricked her finger with a safety pin. She squeezed a drop of blood, the only pure antidote, into his mouth and down his zombie gullet. Gluggity-glug-glug.

  “There!” she said. “That ought to do it.”

  And with that they tossed him back in the closet—bam! Zack slammed the door shut and they waited for the effect of the dose to transform Rice back into a regular human.

  The hinges on the door rattled as Rice thumped away, hyper with rage inside the storage closet.

  “He’s not unzombifying!” Madison said, with growing alarm in her voice.

  “Just give it a minute . . . ,” Zack said, trying to stay calm.

  Zoe looked at her watch as the seconds ticked by.

  But for the next two minutes, Rice kept going more and more berserk. “Yarghle-blarghle-raaaargh!”

  Ozzie bit his thumbnail and looked nervously at the three of them. “He should at least be passed out by now.”

  “Unzombify, you big dummy!” Zoe yelled, slapping the outside of the door loudly.

  Zack gazed off into the middle distance, thinking hard for an explanation. And then it hit him like a dodgeball right between the eyes. He gasped and pointed a finger at Madison. “You!”

  “Me?” Madison said. “What about me?”

  “The pizza we ate earlier,” Zack said. “It . . . it must have unveganized your blood or something!”

  “That’s impossible!” Ozzie said. “She picked the cheese off her pizza. I saw her do it.”

  “Um.” Madison cast her eyes to the ground and mumbled, “I might have had a few nibbles of cheese.”

  “Madison!” Ozzie cried desperately.

  “And maybe, like, a pepperoni—”

  “Maybe, like, a pepperoni?” Zack asked, throwing his arms up in disbelief.

  “I’m sorry,” Madison pleaded. “I never tried one before, and Zoe told me it wasn’t real meat anyway. By the time I realized she was messing with me, I’d already swallowed it!”

  “Zoe!” Ozzie cried, throwing his hands up in the air. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “How was I supposed to know today was going to be the day that everybody rezombifies?”

  Zack gazed forlornly out across the New York skyline. “Guys, do you know what this means?”

  “That Madison is supergullible?” Zoe said.

  Madison glared at her friend.

  “No,” Zack said. “It means the party’s over.”

  “Ugh!” Madison pouted and stamped her foot. “I was so getting used to being a national hero.”

  “Yeah, well, if you want a chance to be a hero again, we’re gonna have to stay alive,” said Ozzie. “And this time we don’t have an antidote, so you’d better listen up.”

  “Guys, take it easy. We gotta think this through.” Zack scratched his chin. “I don’t think me and Zoe can rezombify, or Twinkles for that matter.” He looked at Madison and Ozzie. “But you two have to be extra careful, because you’ve both never been zombified before.”

  “Wait,” Ozzie said. “How do we know you guys won’t rezombify?”

  “Because Zoe and Twinkles got unzombified by Madison directly, and I took the original antidote,” Zack said. “Not by the popcorn, like Rice did. Besides, Rice already bit my hand and I’m fine.”

  “Yeah,” said Zoe. “If it’s the popcorn antidote wearing off, then it won’t affect us.”

  “Guys,” Zack said, shushing the rest of them. “You hear that?”

  The group peered down on the city one hundred and two stories beneath them. The bang-crack of fender-benders and traffic accidents peppered the air with a noise that resembled a bag of popcorn heating up in the microwave.

  “Oh, man,” Ozzie said. “There’s, like, ten million people in this city, and we’re stuck on top of a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan!”

  A chorus of hair-raising shrieks resounded across the boroughs as the groaning wail of the rezombified masses rose up from the city streets below.

  A sinking feeling grew fast in the pit of Zack’s stomach. This is bad, he thought. Super bad.

  The last rays of daylight vanished beneath the dark red horizon.

  Zack, Zoe, Madison, and Ozzie stood atop the skyscraper in the coming darkness before heading back inside.

  “Yo,” said Zoe. “We needed to get down from here, like, yesterday.”

  “We can’t go down there without a plan,” said Zack. “We gotta call Duplessis and see if he knows anything.”

  “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere until we know what’s going on for sure,” Madison chimed in. “And neither is Twinkles.”

  “Ruff-ruff!” Twinkles yapped in agreement, wagging his tail.

  Madison pulled out her iPad from her handbag and passed it to Zack.

  Zack scrolled through her contacts and found Duplessis. He opened up a video chat on the touch screen and hit send.

  There’s got to be some way to unzombify Rice, Zack thought as they waited for Duplessis to answer their call.

  “I don’t understand,” Zoe said. “Why isn’t he picking up? It’s not like he has a whole lot of friends.”

  “Maybe he’s in on it,” Ozzie said. “Maybe he planned the whole thing from the start.”

  “Okay, Mr. Conspiracy Theory,” Zoe scoffed. “Now you’re starting to sound like Rice.”

  “Actually,” said Madison, making a few zombie noises, “blargh! That’s what Rice sounds like. . . .”

  Just then the door to the women’s bathroom flew open with a sharp bang.

  “Zack!” Madison shouted. “Watch out!” Zack whipped around as their undead chaperone barreled into the hallway. He leaned away from their rezombified Spanish teacher, but Mrs. Gonzalez was already on him. Her mouth stretched wide, jaws ready to clamp down with her rotting chompers. Her grimy hand shot out and gripped the meat between Zack’s neck and shoulder.

  “Yow!” Zack cried, as the senora zombie lifted him straight off the ground with a powerful jerk of her arm. Mrs. Gonzalez then clasped her other clammy, bacterial hand around Zack’s throat, squeezing off his air supply. Zack’s feet dangled inches off the floor as he tried desperately to wedge his fingers between his windpipe and their undead teacher’s hands wringing his neck.

  “Yo tengo problemas,” Zack choked.

  In the blink of an eye, Ozzie dropped down to a crouch and spun like a breakdancer. He kicked his leg out and the heel of his foot landed cleanly above Mrs. G’s ankles, sweeping their rezombified chaperone’s legs right out from under her. With a chop of his hand, Ozzie rendered their Spanish teacher unconscious.

  Zack stood up and brushed himself off. “Thanks, amigo.”

  “No problemo,” Ozzie said, and took a bow.

  They stashed their conked-out zombie teacher in the bathroom and regrouped out in the hall.

  “Hey, you guys, look!” Madison said, picking her iPad off the floor. She held up the screen for everyone to see the video-chat icon flashing. “It’s Duplessis!”

  “Duplessis!” Zack shouted, taking the iPad from Madison. “Can you hear us?”

  Duplessis’s chubby little face popped onto the screen. He looked panicked. “Zachary! Zachary! You must get back here. The popcorn antidote is wearin
g off!”

  “We know,” said Zack. “What the heck happened?”

  “My genetic decoder must have been out-of-date, and the serum it cloned was defective.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Zoe scoffed. “Can’t we just feed them more of the popcorn or something?”

  “I already tried that,” Duplessis explained. “But when my zombies ingested it, there was no effect the second time around. They must have built up an immunity!”

  “So what are we supposed to do then?” Zack asked.

  “Listen to me,” Duplessis said. “You have to get Madison back here as soon as possible! If I can get another pure sample, I can fix the problem and concoct a stronger, permanent batch of the zombie popcorn.”

  “No way, dude,” Zoe said. “We went to you last time.”

  “Seriously,” Madison said. “We’re not driving all the way out to Montana again, so you better come to New York and pick us up!”

  “Yeah,” Ozzie said. “Don’t you have a private jet or something?”

  “I do, but my pilot’s gone and rezombified,” Duplessis told them. “I’m under siege!” He panned the webcam over to the door of his sealed-off laboratory. A large crowd of rezombified BurgerDog factory workers pressed their grotesquely mutated faces against the windows of his testing lab, pawing at the glass. “Without a genuine antidote sample, we’re all doomed!”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Madison said. “But I ate some pepperoni today and now I kind of sort of can’t unzombify zombies anymore.”

  “Oh, no,” Duplessis said. “This is worse than I thought.”

  “We’re really sorry,” Zack said. “It was an accident.”

  “Put Rice on the phone.” Duplessis’s voice sounded shocked.

  “No can do,” Ozzie chimed in. “Rice already rezombified.”

  “How could I have been so stupid?” Duplessis shouted. His head fell to his chest and he began to sob uncontrollably, pulling his wacky skunk hair into a mess of pointed spikes. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

  “There’s really no time to feel sorry for yourself, okay?” Ozzie said. “We need advice.”

  “Oh, now I get it,” Duplessis said between sobs. “You only want to talk to me when you need something, huh?”

  “Well, how much of a sample are we talking here?” Zack asked, trying to stay focused.

  “A drop, a speck, a molecule!” the fast-food geneticist yelled in despair. Just then Duplessis turned away from the webcam. Zack and the gang watched the scene unfold on the iPad as the rezombified BurgerDog factory workers busted into his laboratory, ripping the doors right off the hinges.

  Duplessis turned back to the video chat, his eyes wide with fright, as the zombies started to funnel through the doorway.

  “What do we do?” Zack yelled.

  “Find more vegans and give them that gingko water!” Duplessis shouted. “We should be able to simulate another antidote serum just as effective as Madison’s. . . .”

  The rezombified BurgerDog employees thrashed across the room, sweeping beakers and test tubes off the tabletops and sending them crashing to the floor.

  “Gotta go,” Duplessis said quickly. “Before these zombies give me an encephalotomy!” He turned his attention to one of his experiments about to get trashed by a rampaging zombie. “Hey, you, get away from there! Don’t touch that. That’s my brand-new formula for a sour-cream-and-onion-flavored sports drink!” The BurgerDog creator raced out of the frame, knocking the webcam to the floor.

  A second later, the connection cut off, and the touch screen turned bright blue.

  BurgerDog was officially back in business.

  The zombie-making business.

  Zack stared down blankly at the iPad. “What the heck are we gonna do now?” he said, handing the tablet back to Madison. “We’re right back at square one.”

  Ozzie scratched his head. “I wonder where the airport is around here?”

  “What’s it matter?” Zack said. “You think we’re just going to round up some vegans and jet off to Montana? Where are we supposed to find real human specimens right now? Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population got unzombified by the popcorn. We’re the lucky ones.”

  “Yeah, real lucky.” Madison rolled her eyes.

  “My point is that we can’t just go running into the return of the living dead without a plan. We’re in New York City and we’ve got zilch! No weapons, no antidote.” Zack turned to Zoe. “Because earlier today somebody had to trick Madison into eating a pepperoni!”

  “Don’t you dare, you little worm,” Zoe snapped. “I will not be your scapegoat!”

  “Oh, you’re some kind of goat, all right!” Zack shouted.

  “Come on.” Ozzie grabbed Zoe’s hand and put it back down. “We have to stick together if we’re going to get out of this mess.”

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere until I get a new Band-Aid,” Madison said, pinching her pricked finger. “There’s no way I’m getting infected with slime and turning into one of those zombie freaks.”

  A long silence followed, punctuated by zombie Rice’s banging on the inside of the closet door. The gears in Zack’s head turned, his thoughts whirling frantically to come up with a solution. Bingo.

  “That’s it!” he shouted with a sudden flash of hope. “The Band-Aid!”

  “Yes,” Madison said. “I need one.”

  “No,” said Zack. “I’m talking about the Band-Aid you had on before you ate the pizza!”

  Madison gasped, realizing what he meant. “It has my vegan blood on it! Zack, you’re a genius!”

  “We gotta go back to Central Park, you guys,” Zack said. “Come on, help me zombie-proof Rice!”

  Zack and Zoe dragged zombie Rice out of the closet and hog-tied him with Twinkles’s pink Bedazzled collar and leash. Ozzie found some duct tape in the storage closet and used it to tape the King Kong mask securely over Rice’s head.

  Rice wriggled his zombified tongue through the little hole in the mouth of the gorilla mask, searching around like a nose sniffing at the air. “Not quite as good as a helmet,” Ozzie said. “But it’ll have to do.”

  Lastly, Ozzie duct-taped Rice’s hands behind his back. The girls pulled him by the leash into the elevator and Zack and Ozzie followed. As the elevator descended, Rice snapped his teeth and snarled his lips in time with the Muzak playing on the overhead speakers.

  A few seconds into the ride, Zack pinched his nostrils shut. “Yo, who did that?”

  “Don’t look at me!” Ozzie said. “I didn’t do it!”

  “Ha,” Zoe said. “Whoever denied it supplied it.”

  “Whoever smelt it dealt it.” Ozzie pointed at Zack.

  “You’re both wrong,” said Zack. “Whoever said the rhyme committed the crime.”

  “Will you guys shut up?” Madison said. “It’s Rice. He’s already starting to stink!”

  “Yuck!” They all plugged their noses, glaring at zombie Rice as the elevator reached the first floor of the Empire State Building.

  Three . . . two . . . one.

  The doors of the elevator opened and they stared out across the ground floor.

  The lobby teemed with rezombified freaks. The claustrophobic mass was a mix of their classmates, building employees, tourists, and New Yorkers. Dozens of subhuman beings dribbled ooze and drooled slime as they lumbered aimlessly across the smooth marble floor.

  Zack hit the door-close button and held the elevator. “Whoa!” He turned to the others. “There are a lot of zombies out there!”

  “Okay, guys and girls, it’s go time,” Ozzie said, unclipping his nunchakus from his belt buckle. He gripped both handles and flexed the chain. “We gotta get Rice across the lobby, through those revolving doors, and out into the street. Ready?”

  “Set . . . ,” said Zack, pressing the elevator button.

  Ding!

  The doors flung open and the zombies turned and glared as the gang charged out of the elevator.
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br />   “Here we go!” Ozzie lunged forward and unleashed a furious nunchaku attack at the zombified doorman standing in his way. The doorman’s graying face mashed over to the side as if it were made of wet clay, and the great goon dropped like a rag doll.

  Ozzie caught the unconscious zombie midfall and heaved him into the oncoming zombie foot slog.

  Nom-nom! Glurp!

  Next to him, Zoe kickboxed her way through a slew of flesh-guzzling tourists, taking out two teenage zombie siblings wearing I ♥ NY T-shirts with a flurry of punch-kick combos. As Zoe and Ozzie cleared a path through the kill-crazy melee, Zack yanked the leash, guiding Rice forward, while Madison kept him on a beeline for the exit.

  Just then a hot-pink backpack came out of nowhere and slammed Zack directly in the chest. “Ugh!” Zack lost his grip on Rice’s leash as he stumbled back with the wind knocked out of him. He slipped on a wet splotch of mucus and landed on his tailbone with a hard thud. Zack winced in pain, clutching his back.

  The pink-backpacked zombie spun around, snarling fiercely. It was Mandy Pitman, his classmate and one of the Fearsome Foursome. Her claws were shiny bright crimson daggers from her red nail polish. She pounced at Zack, who went flat on his back and lifted his knees. He caught the zombie mean girl with the soles of his feet and leg-pressed her against the wall with a double kick. The undead brat hit the wall and slid to the floor in a motionless lump of twisted, rotting flesh.

  “Sorry!” Zack shouted.

  “Rargh!”

  Zack turned his head and flinched as a second member of the foursome staggered through the undead mayhem. The queen bee herself, Gabby Kahn, lurched over Zack. “Glargh!” He brought his leg back again and delivered a sharp kick to her kneecap, which bent back the wrong way. She dropped to the floor and crawled forward, dragging her dead leg behind her, leaving a trail of slime in her wake.

  “Madison!” Zack yelled as zombie Rice came back into view. “Watch out!”

  “Rargh!” Zombie Rice reeled around and barreled into Madison, who stumbled and fell with a splat in a pool of slimy zombie ooze.